I thought I would start chronicling the making of my next telescope, a 12.5" Newtonian Astrograph that will replace my current 200mm Newtonian. I've learned a lot from building the 200mm scope (including fibreglassing technique), and am putting that experience into building this one, which I have been targeting as my ultimate imaging scope (at least for the near future
). I've been waiting nearly a year for the carbon fibre sandwich panel tube which was delivered today
I also recently took possession of the 12.5" main (conical) mirror from Deep Sky Optics (Marc Suchting).
The components are as follows:
- 12.5" F/5 conical mirror (standard Newtonian paraboloid) by Deep Sky Optics.
- 64" x 16" OD carbon fibre sandwich panel tube (and high volume filtered air system) from Dream Telescopes (see attached image).
- 3" Optec Crayford focuser (TCF-S3)
- 100mm minor axis diagonal (1/20 wave) from Antares.
- 3" Keller corrector from ASA.
- 70mm finder / widefield imager from William Optics.
- My own design for the secondary support and spider - parts to be machined by Anglade Engineering. Now that I have the tube and can take precise measurements I will be able to finalise my autocad drawings.
- Also my own design for the main mirror cell that I will custom build using fibreglassing / CF castings.